Les Miserables: From Stage to Screen

by Benedict Nightingale    (Find this book)
It has been 150 years since Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables was first published. However, for the last 25 or so, the poignant saga of Jean Valjean, a villain to some but a savior to others, set in France during the early years of the 19th century, has become one of the world's most popular musicals and has become one of the must-see movies of 2013. In Les Miserables: From Stage to Screen, the reader can find out how the musical came to life the trials and tribulations of turning it from the initial concept into a thrilling musical extravaganza and how the new film version starring Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe and directed by the Oscar-winning Tom Hooper ( The King's Speech ) has emerged from the show that has been seen by over 60 million people worldwide. To bring this fascinating story to life, the book also contains at least 20 facsimiles that highlight key moments in the creation of Les Miserables, both on stage and on the screen, including: * Original costume sketches * Annotated scripts * Original music scores and librettos * Film screenplay extracts and anniversary mementos  --  Publisher Marketing

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

by Amanda Ripley    (Find this book)
How Do Other Countries Create "Smarter" Kids?
In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.
What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers?
In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland.
Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many "smart" kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education.
A journalistic tour de force, "The Smartest Kids in the World" is a book about building resilience in a new world--as told by the young Americans who have the most at stake. -- Publisher Marketing

Harvest

by Jim Crace    (Find this book)
On the morning after harvest, the inhabitants of a remote English village awaken looking forward to a hard-earned day of rest and feasting at their landowner's table. But the sky is marred by two conspicuous columns of smoke, replacing pleasurable anticipation with alarm and suspicion.
One smoke column is the result of an overnight fire that has damaged the master's outbuildings. The second column rises from the wooded edge of the village, sent up by newcomers to announce their presence. In the minds of the wary villagers a mere coincidence of events appears to be unlikely, with violent confrontation looming as the unavoidable outcome. Meanwhile, another newcomer has recently been spotted taking careful notes and making drawings of the land. It is his presence more than any other that will threaten the village's entire way of life.
In effortless and tender prose, Jim Crace details the unraveling of a pastoral idyll in the wake of economic progress. His tale is timeless and unsettling, framed by a beautifully evoked world that will linger in your memory long after you finish reading.  -- Publisher Marketing

Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

by David Mikics    (Find this book)
Wrapped in the glow of the computer or phone screen, we cruise websites; we skim and skip. We glance for a brief moment at whatever catches our eye and then move on. "Slow Reading in a Hurried Age" reminds us of another mode of reading--the kind that requires our full attention and that has as its goal not the mere gathering of information but the deeper understanding that only good books can offer.
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"Slow Reading in a Hurried Age" is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful and satisfying reading experience, and who wants to sharpen reading skills and improve concentration. David Mikics, a noted literary scholar, demonstrates exactly how the tried-and-true methods of slow reading can provide a more immersive, fulfilling experience. He begins with fourteen preliminary rules for slow reading and shows us how to apply them. The rules are followed by excursions into key genres, including short stories, novels, poems, plays, and essays.
Reading, Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch. A good book is a pathway to finding ourselves, by getting lost in the words and works of others.  -- Publisher Marketing

A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year

by Tom Nissley    (Find this book)
At once a love letter to literature and a charming guide to the books most worth reading, A Reader's Book of Days features bite-size accounts of events in the lives of great authors for every day of the year. Here is Marcel Proust starting In Search of Lost Time and Virginia Woolf scribbling in the margin of her own writing, "Is it nonsense, or is it brilliance?" Fictional events that take place within beloved books are also included: the birth of Harry Potter's enemy Draco Malfoy, the blood-soaked prom in Stephen King's Carrie.
A Reader's Book of Days is filled with memorable and surprising tales from the lives and works of Martin Amis, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Roberto Bolano, the Bronte sisters, Junot Diaz, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Keats, Hilary Mantel, Haruki Murakami, Flannery O'Connor, Orhan Pamuk, George Plimpton, Marilynne Robinson, W. G. Sebald, Dr. Seuss, Zadie Smith, Susan Sontag, Hunter S. Thompson, Leo Tolstoy, David Foster Wallace, and many more. The book also notes the days on which famous authors were born and died; it includes lists of recommended reading for every month of the year as well as snippets from book reviews as they appeared across literary history; and throughout there are wry illustrations by acclaimed artist Joanna Neborsky.
Brimming with nearly 2,000 stories, A Reader's Book of Days will have readers of every stripe reaching for their favorite books and discovering new ones. -- Publisher Marketing

Stella Adler on America's master playwrights : Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee

by Stella Adler   (Find this book)
Brilliant lectures on the American masters from the late, legendary acting teacher. The indomitable Stella Adler (1901-1992), who tutored Marlon Brando, displays both her omnivorous intellect and decades of experience in this generous second volume of acting-class lectures (following Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov, 1999) edited by celebrity biographer Paris (Garbo, 2002, etc.). Here, the teacher covers Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. Adler knew the play, she knew the writer, and her message to her actors was direct: You must understand the play and the playwright at both the macro and micro level. You can't do O'Neill if you don't know about his tormented Irish-Catholic background; you can't perform A Streetcar Named Desire or Death of a Salesman if you don't know about postwar alienation. "If you don't use the play's world, you are not an actor, because the play is taken from that world, not yours, and you have to go there to find it." Also, you must know the character's inner and outer life: "Does he have an accent? How does he dress, how does he wear his hair? ...What are the circumstances he lives in?" In Beyond the Horizon, Robert is weak, but don't play him weak; he thinks he is strong. In Mourning Becomes Electra, play Christine like a queen; "use your epic voice, not a little intimate voice." In The Glass Menagerie, Laura wears a leg brace; when she sits on the floor with her gentleman caller, she's in pain. Read between the lines; follow what's said and what isn't. Adler has another, subtler message for her actors: Stay true to your art. An exciting, inspiring and essential book for anyone interested in American theater. COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects

by Richard Kurin    (Find this book)
The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest, most important, and most beloved repository for the objects that define our common heritage. Now Under Secretary for Art, History, and Culture Richard Kurin, aided by a team of top Smithsonian curators and scholars, has assembled a literary exhibition of 101 objects from across the Smithsonian's museums that together offer a marvelous new perspective on the history of the United States.
Ranging from the earliest years of the pre-Columbian continent to the digital age, and from the American Revolution to Vietnam, each entry pairs the fascinating history surrounding each object with the story of its creation or discovery and the place it has come to occupy in our national memory. Kurin sheds remarkable new light on objects we think we know well, from Lincoln's hat to Dorothy's ruby slippers and Julia Child's kitchen, including the often astonishing tales of how each made its way into the collections of the Smithsonian. Other objects will be eye-opening new discoveries for many, but no less evocative of the most poignant and important moments of the American experience. Some objects, such as Harriet Tubman's hymnal, Sitting Bull's ledger, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, and the "Enola Gay "bomber, tell difficult stories from the nation's history, and inspire controversies when exhibited at the Smithsonian. Others, from George Washington's sword to the space shuttle "Discovery," celebrate the richness and vitality of the American spirit. In Kurin's hands, each object comes to vivid life, providing a tactile connection to American history.
Beautifully designed and illustrated with color photographs throughout, "The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects "is a rich and fascinating journey through America's collective memory, and a beautiful object in its own right. -- Publisher Marketing